Book of Documents

Which classics did he select? How important was his selection of them? Was he reviving these? Was he sort of canonizing them? Or Or were these handed down to him as the classical texts and the body of work? And what did he do to either edit or revise or otherwise promote them for the subsequent generations?

Well, the five classics that became canonical in the Han period, the two oldest ones, the ones that come from kind of the early Zhou period that he thought, that he believed was a golden age, are the Shi Jing, the Book of Odes, or the Classic of Poetry, and the Shang Shu, or the Book of Documents, sometimes also called the Shu Jing, the Classic of Documents.

And those are both texts that some version of predates Confucius.

And I think that especially as Shujing was thought to have been then selected kind of by Confucius throughout most of Chinese history.

So the classic of documents is these speeches of the former sage kings.

And so, you know, the poetry is more about internal emotional states.

The book of documents is more about kind of how to run a state and...

Law and things like that.

Their early history is known only from their own annals, which throw no light upon the question.

The Shujing, one of the Confucian classics, edited, not composed by Confucius, begins, like Livy, with legendary accounts of princes whose virtues and vices are intended to supply edification or warning to subsequent rulers.

Yao and Shun were two model emperors whose date, if any, was somewhere in the third millennium BC.

The age of Yao and Shun in Chinese literature means what the Golden Age means with us.

The Yellow River is a fierce and terrible stream, too swift for navigation, turgid and full of mud, depositing silt upon its bed until it rises above the surrounding country when it suddenly alters its course, sweeping away villages and towns in a destructive torrent.

Among most early agricultural nations, such a river would have inspired superstitious awe, and floods would have been averted by human sacrifice.

In the Shujing, however, there is little trace of superstition.

Yao and Shun and Yu, the latter's successor, were all occupied in combating the inundations, but their methods were those of the engineer, not of the miracle worker.

Their early history is known only from their own annals, which throw no light upon the question.

The Shujing, one of the Confucian classics, edited, not composed by Confucius, begins, like Livy, with legendary accounts of princes whose virtues and vices are intended to supply edification or warning to subsequent rulers.

Yao and Shun were two model emperors whose date, if any, was somewhere in the third millennium BC.

The age of Yao and Shun in Chinese literature means what the Golden Age means with us.

The Yellow River is a fierce and terrible stream, too swift for navigation, turgid and full of mud, depositing silt upon its bed until it rises above the surrounding country when it suddenly alters its course, sweeping away villages and towns in a destructive torrent.

Among most early agricultural nations, such a river would have inspired superstitious awe, and floods would have been averted by human sacrifice.

In the Shujing, however, there is little trace of superstition.

Yao and Shun and Yu, the latter's successor, were all occupied in combating the inundations, but their methods were those of the engineer, not of the miracle worker.

Their early history is known only from their own annals, which throw no light upon the question.

The Shujing, one of the Confucian classics, edited not composed by Confucius, begins, like Livy, with legendary accounts of princes whose virtues and vices are intended to supply edification or warning to subsequent rulers.

Yao and Shun were two model emperors whose date, if any, was somewhere in the third millennium BC.

The age of Yao and Shun in Chinese literature means what the Golden Age means with us.

The Yellow River is a fierce and terrible stream, too swift for navigation, turgid and full of mud, depositing silt upon its bed until it rises above the surrounding country when it suddenly alters its course, sweeping away villages and towns in a destructive torrent.

Among most early agricultural nations, such a river would have inspired superstitious awe, and floods would have been averted by human sacrifice.

In the Shujing, however, there is little trace of superstition.

Yao and Shun and Yu, the latter's successor, were all occupied in combating the inundations, but their methods were those of the engineer, not of the miracle worker.

For instance, the written language, the only written language in the East Asia was the literary Chinese, which was designed somehow in the center of the Zhou power.

And a lot of other texts, the prestigious texts, like the Book of Poems, Book of Documents, their early variants were designed in the Zhou royal domain.

And number three, institutional.

And this brings us back to this rules-based order.

Upon the happy combination of these depends the good fortune of the inquirer.

It is a relief to turn from the foregoing confused and bewildering work to the Book of History, with its state papers and practical wisdom.

This volume, compiled by Confucius, contains the seeds of all things valuable in the estimation of the Chinese.

It is at once the foundation of their political system, history, and religious rites, and the basis of their tactics, music, and astronomy.